“Last month Edwin Peel came to talk to us about developments in contract law. A chunk of the presentation was about interpretation and what he coined its ‘de-Hoffmannisation’. We now know, following Wood v Capita, that: ‘The court’s task is to ascertain the objective meaning of the language which the parties have chosen to express their agreement. It has long been accepted that this is not a literalist exercise focused solely on a parsing of the wording of the particular clause but that the court must consider the contract as a whole and, depending on the nature, formality and quality of drafting of the contract, give more or less weight to elements of the wider context in reaching its view as to that objective meaning’. While both literalism and contextualism have a role to play in ascertaining the meaning of a contract, the natural language is likely to win the day all other things being equal …” (more)
[Jason Rix, Allen & Overy: Compact Contract, 7 December]
First posted 2018-12-07 16:27:11
Leave a Reply